Outcome Documents for
200 Years of Johnson v. M’Intosh (JvM): Indigenous Responses to the Religious Foundations of Racism
This website is the official archive of the outcome publications from the Henry J. Luce Foundation Grant Funded project “200 Years of Johnson v. M’Intosh (JvM): Indigenous Responses to the Religious Foundations of Racism". Professor Philip P. Arnold was the PI on this project which ran from 2022-2024. Project activities included a conference, podcasts, and various types of publications.
Summary
“200 Years of Johnson v. M’Intosh (JvM): Indigenous Responses to the Religious Foundations of Racism,” is a collaborative initiative made possible through relationships developed over 30 years between academic and Indigenous communities. At its core, the project seeks to interrogate and critically examine connections between the Doctrine of Christian Discovery (DOCD), the Catholic Papal Bulls that undergird the Doctrine, and the Doctrine’s pernicious influence on United States Indian Law today.
The 200th anniversary of JvM provides an excellent moment to challenge the theology and jurisprudence of DOCD and this critical Supreme Court decision. The project will deliver a range of digital products and written works combined with a host of public outreach activities to raise awareness about the harmful impacts of the DOCD and provide support for a global movement of Indigenous People’s that seek to repudiate it.
The Contemporary Presence of Discovery’s Assertion in Canada
any groups and organizations have taken actions to repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery. In an opinion piece published in Canada’s Globe and Mail in Aug 2022, Douglas Sanderson asserts that the Doctrine of Discovery had little influence on the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the French and English who treated Indigenous nations as equals. The Doctrine of Discovery seeks to explain how European nations dispossessed Indigenous peoples of their land and rights. Sanderon claims that giving force to the Doctrine of Discovery (which he understands as an American legal fiction) in Canada misrepresents Indigenous history. Further, Mr. Sanderson explains that after the invention of this doctrine which, “neatly explained Indigenous dispossession in a sentence or two” no one cared about the past and “the story of relationships based in diplomacy and alliance slipped almost from memory.”
Mark Tremblay
Order, Economy, and Legality:Johnson v. M’Intosh after Two Hundred Years
Mother Earth is the wellspring of indigenous culture, religion, and economic life. It forms the identity of Native Americans as indigenous peoples.rom the beginning, the appropriation and distribution of Indigenous land had to be orderly. Settler-colonists needed a system to avoid haphazard, disorganized tribal land transactions and achieve their goal of the private commodification of the expanding American frontier.
Andrew Little
Federal Anti-Indian Law: The Legal Entrapment of Indigenous Peoples
2023 is the bi-centennial year of Johnson v. McIntosh, the case that put ‘Christian discovery’ into US property law in a way that simultaneously created ‘federal Indian law’: The 200th year since the imposition of domination on the basis of a religious and racist theory of humankind. A domination that two-hundred years later is still considered ‘law.’
Peter d’Errico
